Steady sailing of vessels, or a steady state of the vessel when anchoring, are providing comfort for persons, animals or fragile goods. In particular, waves providing slamming on the vessel hull, or is providing excessive pitching of the vessel hull, may be a problem in marine operations. This is also the case for service and supply vessels performing operations in relation to offshore or subsea installations. One particular critical operation with respect to offshore situations is when a vessel is supporting a helicopter platform.
A steady motion of the vessel has been considered for aircraft carriers, where aircrafts need to be able to start and land under severe weather conditions. The solution for aircraft carriers appears to be combining the objective of steady sailing, or even in anchored state, with a desire to be able to have as many aircrafts on board as possible, and arriving at making very large vessels having large sea to deck height. In this way the vessel becomes large compared to even high waves. Moreover, because aircraft carriers, when aircrafts have to start and land, normally are facing a direction of incoming wind, this means that the bow of the aircraft carrier will always face the direction of incoming waves, since directions of incoming waves coincides with the direction of incoming wind.
Resorting to such large vessels having large sea to deck height is not a solution for leisure vessels, ordinary transport vessels, service and supply vessels as well as other types of vessels.
Hence, there is a need for an improved hull shape design of a vessel, which may provide more steady sailing with less pitching, slamming of waves and a reduced response to impact of loads from waves hitting the vessel. And not just for sailing, but also when the vessel is anchored, or in a fixed position due to subsea and offshore operations for example. Also, during sailing, it is not always possible to choose an upwind route, so a vessel needs to be steady and stable for the aforementioned reasons under any direction of incoming waves relative to the vessel's sailing direction.